A Bumper Crop for the Bone Orchard

Dennis Preen scowled as he got out of his Audi. The noxious blanket from the paper mill covered the town today, giving him a banger of a headache. The prickly summer heat didn’t help matters. He could feel his armpits seeping the second he emerged from the civilized comfort of the car’s air conditioning. He paused only to retrieve his briefcase from the trunk before stomping up the hill, shading his eyes from the cresting sun.

             He saw the old man’s bald red skull bobbing in time with an unheard melody through the sweat stinging his eyes and the fog on his glasses. “Mr. Karron, I presume?”

             The old man tossed another shovelful up on the excavated pile and laboriously pulled himself out of the grave. He stared at Preen warily, not extending a callused hand, but merely nodding.

             Preen took his hand back, gratefully. “I’m Dennis Preen, from Preen Casualty & Life. I spoke to your wife.”

             Karron spit. 

             Preen pulled off his spectacles, wiped them with a handkerchief, wiped each eye, then put the cloth back in his coat pocket and the glasses back on his face. It did no good for his respectability; his remaining hair was wet and plastered to his scalp, giving him the look of a cornered defendant. “Do you think we could talk inside?”

* * *

             Preen took the glass of lemonade gratefully, despite it being pink and tart and pulpy. Kulkarni and Grayson had arrived, easing his anxiety somewhat. Karron sat like a stone in the recliner, not blinking. 

             Preen gulped and began. “Well, gentlemen, it’s good to be together at last.” Kulkarni looked down at his feet, Grayson looked at his watch, and Karron kept up his gargoyle act. “These are unprecedented times, gentlemen, unprecedented indeed.”

             No one spoke.

             Preen resumed. “You, Dr. Kulkarni, are in the business of saving lives. You, Dr. Grayson, are responsible for recording and looking into why lives were lost. And you, Mr. Karron, handle the mortal remains once lives have been lost. Me? Why, I simply manage the financial risk of a life being lost.”

             “It’s a small town, Preen. We all know each other. Get on with it,” Grayson grumbled.

             Preen pursed his lips. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. “Unprecedented times means unprecedented risk. Dr. Kulkarni, what’s your practice’s revenue look like year-over-year, without that government subsidy?”

             Kulkarni swallowed. “Down 54%.”

             “When the subsidy stops, how will you pay your medical school bills?”

             Kulkarni looked away.

             “Dr. Grayson, surely one man’s feast is another’s famine. How’s your caseload this year versus last?”      

             “Up 230%.”

             “And from your impatience, may we presume the county isn’t augmenting your staff accordingly?”

             Grayson leaned forward, eyes blazing like the Ancient Mariner. “You’re damned right they aren’t! They keep saying there’s nobody to augment with. Every county’s in the same boat. ‘Just make do for now.’ I’m sixty-seven, for God’s sake!”

             “And Mr. Karron…”, Preen smiled gently, “Why was our town’s funeral director digging a grave by hand today?”

             “You know why,” Karron said, his voice guttural. 

             “I do indeed. It’s because in a time when so many can no longer work, so few will work, isn’t that right?”

             Karron nodded ruefully.

             “As for me, life insurance payouts are up fourfold this year. Fourfold! Policy pricing hasn’t been able to keep up---'unprecedented events’---and so a 132-year-old insurance firm with the best reputation in the state is on the verge of financial collapse. It can’t go on, gentlemen, it mustn’t go on!”

             Grayson stood up. “What are you going to do about it, Denny? Another miracle cure? It’s been done!”

             Preen sighed. “I’m going to manage the risk, Doug. And help you do the same.”

             “Aww, hell, I can just retire. I don’t need this crap.”

             “Do you have enough to retire on, Doug? Crypto took a bath this year. You sold the boat. How long will the proceeds last you? I know the Coroner’s Office doesn’t pay in the big leagues, Doug, but three divorces in you need major league pay. Am I wrong?” 

             Grayson sat down.

             “Financial ruin, gentlemen. We are all facing it, right now. Dr. Kulkarni has done the math; it’s why he’s here. I’ve shown you the equations for Dr. Grayson, it’s why he hasn’t left. As for Mr. Karron, it’s not about what he stands to lose, but what he stands to gain.”

             Karron’s eyebrow pitched. “What do you mean?”

             “What proportion of business have you had to turn away for the lack of a crematorium, Mr. Karron.”

             “A fair bit. But I don’t have the help anyway.”

             “If you had the equipment and the staff to man it, at present volumes what would the effect on your annual revenue be?”

             Karron rubbed his dirty jaw. “Well, I don’t know. Probably triple.”

             “Triple!” Preen smiled. “That’d pay for a front loader to dig some graves, wouldn’t it?”

             Karron ruminated.

             “This is America, gentlemen. The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave. What did our forefathers do when faced with unprecedented circumstances? Why, they rose to the occasion---they innovated. And so shall we.”

             Preen scanned their faces. He smiled. He had them. He had them!

             “Dr. Kulkarni, what does the federal government pay for each confirmed diagnosis in our present regrettable circumstance?”

             “$28,000.”

             “And if the diagnosis happened to be of influenza, how much would you get then?”

             “Well, just the normal Medicare/Medicaid or private insurance reimbursable rate of course.”

             “And in the case of a patient’s unfortunate demise, who confirms that they were, ahem, so fortunately afflicted?”

             Dr. Kulkarni pointed at Dr. Grayson.

             “Quite so,” Preen said. “Similarly, in the case of an unfortunate death with a favorable diagnosis, we insurance providers get a sizable offset, courtesy of dear old Uncle Sam and the American taxpayer, failing which, our industry would collapse under the weight of excess deaths.”

             Karron raised his hand.

             “Yes, Mr. Karron?”

             “Where do I fit in? It doesn’t matter to me what killed a man, so long as the body comes to me.”

             “Ahh, yes, Mr. Karron, that is so. But let me ask you this, prevailing upon your superior knowledge of corpse disposal methods: has anyone ever exhumed a pile of ash in order to verify cause of death?”

             Karron scoffed. “Of course not….”

             “Then you gentlemen get my point, and why Mr. Karron’s participation in this endeavor is so crucial. As for his reward, that sparkling new crematorium, we are going to fund it by sharing the proceeds from maximizing our eligibility for those federal funds I just spoke of.”

             Grayson shook his head. “So let me see if I follow: we’re going to fake the cause of death…”

             Preen held up an open palm. “…liberally diagnose in accordance with the uncertainty inherent in medical practice and the inaccuracy of testing methods….”

             “…and rake in a bunch of cash accordingly. Then what?”

             Preen smiled. “Then we share the wealth across the system, gentlemen. Equally.”

             Kulkarni frowned. “The math doesn’t add up. There isn’t going to be enough cash to spread to meaningfully address the financial burden to all of us, much less to pay for a crematorium. Not in a town of this size, anyway, and in a bigger area there’d be more folks to cut in. No way. It won’t work.”

             Preen leaned back in his chair. “Well, I’m sorry, gentlemen. You disappoint me. You’ve forgotten a very important player in this effort, one with deep pockets and a strong financial incentive to ensure that the excess corpses from excess deaths do not long remain on this mortal coil.” With a theatrical flourish, he produced his smartphone from his jacket pocket, pressed a button, and turned the screen to face them.

             Kulkarni gasped. “I know her! She’s on CNBC all the time. I can’t make it through a shift without one of her reps pushing something on me.”

             “Dr. Kulkarni,” the silky voice purred from thousands of miles away,  “Can we count on your support?”

             The men in the know looked sheepishly at each other, each performing the cost/benefit analysis in his own way, to the tune of his own conscience, and each nodded solemnly in turn, as finally did Mr. Preen.

             And that, Dear Reader, is how the bone orchard received its bumper crop in the Year of Our Lord two thousand and twenty-one, one small town at a time, as Goethe himself warned us so many decades prior would be the case.